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Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Just Plain Wrong,

First of all I don't particularly like guns. It's been years since I've even handled one. Second of all I support the interpretation of the Second Ammendment that indicates that individuals have a right to arm themselves. This is despite that I would be at an advantage if firearms were widely banned and rare. Furthermore I support the right of hunters, even though my preference for steak is Bessy rather than Bambi. However this is just plain wrong. From MSNBC:

Hunting via Internet? Officials wary
Computer controls rifle-camera combination
Updated: 11:38 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2004HOUSTON - Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet, a prospect that has state wildlife officials up in arms.

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A controversial Web site, http:/www.live-shot.com, already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said on Tuesday.

Texas officials are not quite sure what to make of Underwood’s Web site, but may tweak existing laws to make sure Internet hunting does not get out of hand.

“This is the first one I’ve seen,” said Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife director Mike Berger. “The current state statutes don’t cover this sort of thing.”

Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his 330-acre (133-hectare) southwest Texas ranch by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world.

The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which cameras posted in the wild are used to snap photos of animals.

“We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said ’If you just had a gun for that.’ A little light bulb went off in my head,” he said.

Internet hunting could be popular with disabled hunters unable to get out in the woods or distant hunters who cannot afford a trip to Texas, Underwood said.

Berger said state law only covers “regulated animals” such as native deer and birds and cannot prevent Underwood from offering Internet hunts of “unregulated” animals such as non-native deer that many ranchers have imported and wild pigs.

If you want to hunt something you should actually you know have to go and hunt it down. And if you want to kill a large large mammal for yourself, as I have, then you should have the grace to go out there and confront it and see for yourself the violence you have wrought blowing away that animal. If you can do this and do it fairly humanely and sportingly then hunting is acceptable.

However turning it into a video-game for so many reasons is just plain wrong and should not be done. We already have enough problems with kids and virtual gaming violence these days. As conservatives, do we really want to be supporting actual internet moderated killing? The right to bear arms and the legality of hunting does not allow somebody to sit at a keyboard and use a mouse to kill something alive a hundred miles away. Yes hunting is violent but the very act of the hunting and the difficulty involved in themselves pay homage and respect to the value of life. We should never make it easy to take a life. Conservatives who oppose abortion on the basis of the sanctity of life should think twice about supporting something that clearly trivializes and undermines the stark hazards moral and physical involved in taking life or lowering societal standards about what is construed as being acceptable justification for taking life.

5 Comments:

Well, you'll be happy to know, Texas Parks & Wildlife is moving to ban the hunting of game animals over the internet. (I'm not sure you could even acquire a licence in the first place, but hey.) They can't bad hunting of unregulated species or of exotic game. The Lege has to act to do that.

The guy syas he has had ten requests to hunt and about a thousand protest emails from hunters.

I expect this is along the lines of the people trying to publically lose their virginity over the internet or that gig they had in Nevada where people were supposedly going to hunt/track hookers.